


The Good Eye

by Netter



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Item 47 (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1512788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netter/pseuds/Netter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson won't admit it's a bad time for this conversation. No one is shooting at them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Eye

Fitz is watching Triplett and Simmons sort supplies across the hanger when he walks up. “You really should tell her.”

“Sir, I don’t know where everyone seems to be getting the idea I have feelings for Simmons. It’s ridiculous. It’s not like that.” The sad puppy dog face is where everyone is getting the idea, Dr. Fitz.

“Not the secret I’m here about. What do you know about Project T.A.H.I.T.I., Dr. Fitz?” Coulson’s caught a lot of people in a lot of lies over the years, so he’s learned to tell the difference between the type that will do anything including kill you to protect one and the type so desperate to tell the truth they can’t stand it. He leads the panicking young man into the next room for coffee and a chat.

“May said she asked Fury to give her someone who could fix my brain. Not sure who could do that but the guy who did it the first time.”

The young scientist rather impressively pulls himself together, Coulson thinks. “Very little, sir, in terms of organizational structure. I was brought on at the same time as Dr. Streiten. Whatever happened the days before that, I don’t know any more than what’s in the file you gave me. And we all know that’s full of lies.” Too true, but no time to worry about that now.

“They wanted you to build the surgical machines?” He knows it’s not all.

Fitz laughs bitterly. “Anyone could have built the damned machines.” Coulson begs to differ. “I was the only one with access to Simmons’s cell repair research.”

“Do you have any reason to believe this to believe this a HYDRA-affiliated project?” It’s bad enough to have three moles on the bus. He can’t stand to ask outright if Fitz is a terrorist.

Dammit. Four moles. Skye and the Rising Tide, he’d forgotten all about that. What else is he missing? Is Simmons a plant from the Red Room? Is his whole roster sketchy?

Fitz sighs, “No, but like I said, I really don’t know much. Sir, what good will it do to tell Simmons? Now, with everything going on?”

“These things come out eventually. Better now than when someone is shooting at us. Simmons does better when she’s given time to process things.” The last thing he needs is Ward shouting it out at their next meetup to screw with everyone. People die that way.

“You don’t understand. I stole her _thoughts_. To give them to someone else for evil science. Over what? Petty jealousy. She was elbow deep in Chitauri intestines five minutes after the portal closed, but the lovely team of tech specialists they assembled who couldn’t get the weapons to work and were eventually bested by a pretty boy bank robber did not include me. And I was jealous.”

They sit for several minutes nursing coffees before he goes in for the kill.

“Like I said, Fitz, she’ll hear it eventually. Which version of Uncle Phil is gonna go give her advice? The one who reminds her we all make mistakes and that I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working this year to be a better, braver man? Or the one who reminds her you purposefully left all the extra vials of a lifesaving drug underground to explode because you were too ashamed to face her?”

He'd feel far better about himself if Fitz were a little more shocked. “You’re a bully, aren’t you? Deep down under everything.”

“I can be many things when I need to be, but I meant what I said. You’ve done incredibly brave work for this team. And you didn’t do what you did only out of jealousy, Fitz. I think you were terribly, terribly frightened of losing Simmons. I think you were scared if you didn’t prove you could hack it in the big leagues, you would. But you’re going to lose her if you keep lying to her, too.”

* * *

Once upon a time, Phil had been a Good Eye. Fury had a real gift with the nicknames he gave his personal recruits. Things he loved and hated about them, things like an unfortunate moral compass. My One Good Eye meant You’re Never Going To Get My Job With That Attitude as much as it meant I Might Seriously Go Off The Rails Without You.

_Stop recruiting fatherless high school students, Nick._ _Maybe we shouldn’t build an Imperial Cruiser, Nick._ _Let’s rethink the Tesseract thing._ It’s not like he ever changed the director’s behavior, but the guy listened to him, which is more than he ever did with most people. And at least he himself still felt like he knew the difference between right and wrong back then.

Now what is he doing? Running off and acting like a specialist instead of the last Level Eight standing. Lying to his team. Manipulating them. Fitz was exactly right—bullying them. And he hopes May is right, too, in a way. He hopes it is HYDRA messing with him, because when he looks back on this year it plays like _The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Phil Coulson_.

And now May is gone. Skye kidnapped. He just lobbed a grenade in the middle of what’s left of his team. Everyone else he previously trusted is dead, ‘dead,’ missing, or HYDRA. Or thinks he’s dead. That’s its own problem.

He’s stuck in a no-name base with no orders, no team, and no idea who he is.

And he can't begin to see what he's going to do.


End file.
